We’re looking forward to the beginning of Fall Sunday School. At this point we have three adult classes lined up.
David Jackson will be teaching a course called Lighting up Your World – Shining the Light of Jesus into our culture.
The gospel of John identifies Jesus as the Light of the World. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus applies that same label to us as His disciples. A close study of His encounters with the world should help us to shine like He shined; to be “imitators of God” (Ephesians 5.1); to “follow His steps” (1 Peter 2.21). Jesus’ charge to His disciples before His ascension included the admonition: “as my Father has sent me, even so send I you” (John 20.21) . This class will examine a harmony of the gospels from the perspective of Jesus’ encounters with the people of His world. We hope to garner key insights from His approach to engaging His culture in order to inculcate that approach into our own lives as we engage our culture.
This class is targeted at adults, but is open to families with children.
Murry Billingsley will be continuing his study in the book of Matthew. Come and encounter Jesus in the pages of this wonderful and meaningful Gospel account. This class is aimed at adults but is open to families with children.
Bob and Gail DeGray (with Keith and Sheila Kleinhenz) will be leading a class called ‘Created to Connect’ This study looks at the Biblical principles behind the book The Connected Child. We believe that God has given Trinity a ministry to adoptive and foster families, as well as to other parents whose children have faced challenging circumstances. We see this class as a way to further that ministry and create fellowship among those caring in these ways.
The Connected Child is a very helpful and practical book for parents with adoptive children, foster children, or ‘children from hard places.’ Here’s an excerpt from one review of the book:
Purvis and Cross help adoptive parents to understand how a child’s early environment shapes the child’s response to the world. . . . The authors guide the reader in a quest to look beyond behaviors in an effort to understand what the child is really saying and what the child really needs. Purvis and Cross aptly demonstrate how a balance of nurture and structure are essential in healing the hearts of children.
The majority of the book is steeped in strategies designed to improve the child-parent relationship. The ideas, though practical and easy to implement, are not intuitive for most parents. In the early years of parenting my child, I quickly learned that “normal” forms of discipline didn’t work. At that point, the big question became, “Then what??” This book provides effective discipline techniques and so much more.
Created To Connect, the study guide we will be using is designed to help illuminate the biblical principles that serve as the foundation for the philosophy and interventions detailed in The Connected Child. The study guide is a free download at www.empoweredtoconnect.org. The book is $11.32 on Amazon. Contact Bob or Gail if you would like us to order you a book.
Here’s a brief video in which the main author, Karyn Purvis, describes how the study guide came to be and what they hope it will accomplish in the lives of adoptive and foster families:
